The logic goes that public planning always starts from a distorted, fractured image of reality that has poor predictive power. The effects of the plans themselves have ramifications for the future, and since these are sometimes unpredictable the whole edifice of planning leads to chaos and disaster.
In contrast, the "magic" of the market-place is that millions of individuals, without planning enmasse, are able to coordinate their actions through the price system, in a far more organic system, with millions of inputs and responses, that produces far more efficient outcomes.
However, it must be remembered that the planning societies don't have too bad a record of economic growth and social security. True, they often appear to be lurching from one crisis to the next, but such is life -- isn't it?
Meanwhile the market itself always careens from boom to bust, euphoria to depression. When these millions of autonomous actors make their millions of independent decisions through the price mechanism, sure things can be "coordinated " for awhile. Just like bureaucrats or democratic societies can coordinate resources to achieve a stated objective. But as resources congregate towards accomodating temporary demand, they can drive down the prices of some things, run up the prices of other things, and if it all ends in a "correction" that destroys fortunes and lives, why isn't this portrayed in the same way that planners' unintended effects are? Why aren't market corrections treated with the same disdain as planners' failures and incompetence?
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However, it must be remembered that the planning societies don't have too bad a record of economic growth and social security.
I think some sort of evidence is required to support this assertion.
Canada, Japan, South Korea, France, ... Norway, Sweden, ...
http://files.osa.ceu.hu/holdings/300/8/3/text/124-4-127.shtml
These countries have planned for economic circumstances rather than allowed market madness to reign. And they are not basket cases.
I didn't think this was a controversial statement.
"..if it all ends in a "correction" that destroys fortunes and lives, why isn't this portrayed in the same way that planners' unintended effects are?"
There is no direct human agency involved and therefore nobody to blame. Market corrections happen daily, as a look at the stock markets shows; investors lose money every day. The notably large corrections, the "crashes", make the news because the numbers affected are greater.
I think of it as analogous to summer thunderstorms: rain and wind are always present but sometimes the branches of trees come down and damage your car. Those are the storms that nobody can predict with certainty.
No matter how well something is planned, there will be naysayers who believe themselves to have a "better" way. If your plan fails to achieve its ends, or if the variables involved lead to unforeseen results, as sure as night follows day the naysayers will trumpet your "incompetence". And your all-too-human face will be a target for blame.
Hooligan,
That's exactly right. But it's something that mature political actors have to acknowledge, rather than just resign humanity to the vagaries of the capitalist market.
If government doesn't seek to plan, then major corporations will, only in an entirely self-centered way.
One trick though, is to take political-economic decision making down to the as close to ground level as possible. Which was another virtue of my "Workers as Citizens" idea.
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